than I dreaded; and during our stay at Olbera we gave a decided preference to the lady of whom I had thus strangely declared myself the cortejo pro tempore. She was a native of Malaga, whom her husband, and officer on half-pay, had induced to reside in his native town, which she most cordially detested. Perhaps you wish to know the reason of her disguise at the dance. Moved by a similar curiosity I ventured to make the inquiry, when I learned that, for want of time to dress, she had availed herself of the custom of the country, which makes the mantilla a species of dishabille fit for an evening party. In the intervals of the dance we were sometimes treated with dramatic scenes, of which the dialogue is composed on the spot by the actors. This amusement is not uncommon in country-towns. It is known by the name of juegos-a word literally answering to plays. The actors are in the habit of performing together, and consequently do not find it difficult to go through their parts without much hesitation. Men in women's clothes act the female characters. The truth is, that far from being surprised at the backwardness of the ladies to join actively in the amusement, the wit and humour of the juegos is such, that one only wonders how any modest woman can be present at the performance. One night the dance was interrupted by the hoarse voice of our worthy friend Don Juan, who happened to be in the kitchen on a visit to a favourite jar of brandy. The ladies, though possessed of strong nerves, shewed evident symptoms of alarm; and we all hurried out of the room, anxious to ascertain the cause of the threatening tones we had just heard. Upon our coming to the hall, we found the doughty hero standing at a window with a cocked gun in his hands, sending forth a volley of oaths, and protesting he would shoot the first man who approached his door. The assault, however, which he had thus gallantly repulsed, being now over, he soon became cool enough to inform us of the circumstances. Two or three individuals of the adverse party, who were taking their nightly rounds under the windows of their mistresses, hearing the revel at Rosa's house, were tempted to interrupt it, just by setting fire to the door of the entrance-hall. The house might, in a short time, have been in flames, but for the unquenchable thirst of the owner, which so seasonably drew him from the back to the front of the building. We were once retiring home at break of day, when Don Juan, who never quitted us, insisted upon our being introduced at that moment to one or two brothers of the name of Ribera, who had, the evening before, arrived from his farm. Remonstrance was in vain; Don Juan crossed the street, and "the wicket opening with a latch," in primitive simplicity, we beheld one of the most renowned braggadocios of Olbera lying in bed, with a gun by his side. VOL. II. No. 11.-1821. 3 X Ribera, so unceremoniously disturbed, could not help greeting the visitors in rather a rough language; but he soon was appeased, on perceiving that we were strangers. He sat up in his bed, and handed to me a tumbler of brandy, just filled from the ever-present green jar that stood within his reach upon a deal table. The life I was leading had given me a severe cough, and the muzzle of Ribera's gun close to my head would scarcely have alarmed me more than the brim-full rummer with which I was threatened. A terrible fit of coughing, however, came to my assistance; and Don Juan interposing in my favour, I was allowed to lay down the glass. The facetiousness of the two Riberas is greatly admired in their town. These loving brothers had, on a certain occasion, gone to bed at their cortijo (farm,) forgetting to put out the candil, or lamp, hung up at the opposite end of the hall. The first who had retired urged that it was incumbent on him who sat up latest, to have left every thing in proper order; but the offender was too lazy to quit his bed, and a long contest ensued. After much, and probably not very temperate disputing, a bright thought seemed to have crossed the younger brother. And so it was indeed; for stopping short in the argument, he grasped the gun, which, as usual, stood by his bed side, took a sure aim, and put an end both to the dispute and its subject, by shooting down the candil. The humour of this potent conclusion was universally applauded at Olbera. I have been assured that the same extinguisher is still, occasionally, resorted to by the brothers; and a gun heard in the night, infallibly reminds the inhabitants of the Riberas' lamp.* L. D. *In De Rocca's "Memoires sur la Guerre des Français en Espagne," there is a trait so perfectly in character with Don Leucadio's description of the people of Olbera, that I must beg leave to transcribe it: "Nous formâmes un bivouac dans une prairie entourée de murs, attenante á l'auberge qui est sur la route au bas du village. Les habitants furent, pendant le reste du jour, assez tranquilles en apparence, et ils nous fournirent des vivres; mais, au lieu d'un jeune bœuf que j'avais demandé, ils nous apportèrent un âne coupé en quartiers les hussards trouvèrent que ce veau, comme ils l'appellaient, avait le gout un peu fade; mais ce ne fut que longtemps après que nous apprimes cette bizarre tromperie, par les montagnards eux-memes. Ils nous criaient souvent, dans la suite, en tiraillant avec nous, Vous avez mangé de l'âne a Olbera.' C'était, dans leur opinion, la plus sanglante des injures qu'on put faire à des chrétiens." De Rocca's book abounds in lively pictures of Spanish manners, especial. ly in the account he gives of the Serrania de Ronda; without giving way to national partialities, he does full justice to his mortal enemies, and represents them in the most favourable colours which were consistent with truth. 257 FROM PANANTI. I Baci. IL venduto Signor Giuda baciò Whom sordid Judas sold he kiss'd, we're taught, THE LOTTERY. Jacta est Alea. Nothing venture, nothing have. MANY misguided persons, from taking a superficial view, despise the lottery; talk of its demorilizing effects, and wonder why some tax cannot be laid on, in addition to our thousands, old and new, that may supplant it. Uninitiated in the arcana of government, I cannot answer this question but by supposing that no other adequate substitute can be found equally profitable. For my own part, I look upon the managers of the lottery as the discurs de bonne aventure; and thank Heaven that our financiers, in their wisdom, have made it an integral part of their system; treating all cavillers at so profitable a source of revenue, as persons of no knowledge on state subjects. Who will say, that an establishment which tells so well, and contributes so much to the happiness of different individuals, ought not to be supported? The lottery is a game of rouge et noir on a more extended foundation; having, however, a vast advantage on the score of respectability. The Exchequer is the bank-keeper; and the agents, Messieurs Hazard, Bish, Swift, and Co. are dealers of the game, and repeat le jeu est fait with the confidence of experienced practitioners, doing great credit to the character of their respective tables. Those who take into consideration the magnitude of this establishment, must confess, that it required real sublimity of conception to originate a scheme for bringing eighteen millions of persons to play at one table, and boldly to stake the bank against them all. But we live in extraordinary times:-the tempest seems to be no longer the sailor's dread-hot water conducts the cockney on his voyage to Margate, not without terror and sea-sickness, but in perfect security-people walk across rivers dry-shod-and Colonel Congreve kills the leviathans at the North Pole with his skyrockets. Those who are able to calculate the doctrine of chances, "The game is made”—an exclamation repeated at the commencement of every game of rouge et noir. † Captain Scoresby has written to Colonel Congreve from the northern fishery, that he has used his rockets, successfully, for killing whales! like Hoyle and other master-spirits, will acknowledge the superior attractions which the lottery holds out to every lover of desperate play. That which keeps the hazard of the game alive is the principle of most value to them. The spes incerta futuri, the hopes and fears held in equal balance, augment the ardour of the adventurer in his favourite pursuit. Obstacles are but bellows to raise higher the flame, that ill-luck might otherwise extinguish in vulgar souls; they increase the conflagration that lights him on to fortune. His pecuniary losses attach him closer to his object, as the spaniel clings more fondly to his master, the more he is beaten. Failures in the lottery are but spices and cantharides, which stimulate the passions of its admirers, and increase their number. The ten thousand blanks to a prize are forgotten in trying the "towering Alps" of fortune, where always "The eternal snows appear already past, And the first clouds and mountains seem the last." But there is a moral motive for adventuring, highly in favour of trying one's fortune in the lottery; how many it may actuate, is another question-its beneficial result remains the same—it is to be found in the reflection of La Rochefoucault, that "fortune breaks us of many faults, which reason cannot." This game, being privileged, possesses the advantage of freedom from the troublesome visitors of Bow-street; who often spoil the best run of hazard, at the west end of the town, by acting upon the information of some rascally loser, and dragging the whole establishment before the magistrates. At the Exchequer hazard-table, no such danger is to be apprehended; the arm of power throws its protecting shield over the bank there, and evinces its paternal care yet farther, in the appointment of half a dozen sworn commissioners, who are bound to see fair play, and keep the table in order; as well as guard against black-legs. This latter hint was, no doubt, taken from the Palais Royal, where gens-d'armes are stationed at all houses of play, for the same purpose. Who could have believed, a few years ago, that we should so openly tolerate a French fashion? Even as late as 1814, when French eggs were brought over to Brighton, and retailed at a very low rate, a number of fat dowagers, aldermen, and others, who happened to be there bathing and swallowing salt water, held a consultation upon the propriety of eating them, lest they should imbibe jacobinical principles by their mastication. But, to return to the advantages of the lottery. In consequence of the before-mentioned precautions, the most expert "Greek" has no better chance of filling his pockets than he who is uninitiated; and no "pigeons" are plucked, unless all may be so deemed who venture a guinea in the game-a point I shall not presume to decide. What, though the chances of winning may be estimated as one to ten thousand, still somebody must share the prizes; and, as before observed, this inequality can only be rationally considered by persons of spirit, emulous of fortune, and impatient of her favours, as an excitement to fresh daring. The energy of the ambitious man becomes stronger by resistance; it acquires an impetus at the sight of every fresh accumulation of difficulties, which enables him, finally, to surmount them all. Nor is he who advocates the lottery deprived of certain advantages, which the lesser stars in the hemisphere of play enjoy. He knows, as well as they, that, according to the Italian proverb, it may sometimes unavoidably happen that "the man who lives by hope will die by hunger;" and he has it equally in his power to prepare for such an event. Famine is equally free to put him out of pain, and the walls of a prison are as much at his service, as at the service of practitioners at more ignoble games. Above all, he has the consolation of dying like a gentleman, if he chooses; a cheering prospect, well calculated to bear him up to the last, and enliven him by the consciousness that he is not without an ultimate resource, act fortune as she may. Gunpowder-that glorious invention-libelled by Milton, but extolled by the physician Rabelais as a never-failing aperient-gunpowder offers itself for a remedy. By this, though administered in a small quantity, losses in the lottery may be successfully repaired; indeed, it is a fashionable and fascinating prescription, unknown in ancient times, or its praises must have reached us. Brutus would never have used the sword with which he killed Cæsar, to demi-deify himself— Hannibal would never have made himself look black in the face with poison-nor would Cato have stabbed himself with a clumsy Roman sword, and begrimed his couch with his entrails, could either have quitted the world by the use of a Joe Manton, or one of Mortimer's duelling pistols, made and sold expressly for the latter purpose, in the best of all Christian countries! A resource then remains to palliate all losses by the lottery; and life may be let out, "decently and in order," from that part of the body most agreeable to the fancy of the operator. Nothing follows to disgust the most fastidious coroner's juryman, and force him to give a hasty verdict of felo de se, without a proper regard to what the rank and condition of the deceased might have been when alive. The idea of "looking ugly when one's dead," may also be avoided, by a proper consideration of the best method of applying the instrument. I hope the reader will excuse this digression, if it may be so denominated, though it belongs to the very nature of my subject. But, to resume: those who puritanically object to lotteries, and exclaim, "save me" from men |